There’s a remarkable energy in everything Man/Woman/Chainsaw does. That’s evident in their debut EP Eazy Peazy and in speaking with one half of the band about their enjoyment in playing live and exploring their approach to recording. Over Zoom, Lola Cherry (drums), Billy Ward (vocals, guitar) and Vera Leppänen (vocals, bass) come together like a unified voice, often talking at the same time. Their spirited conversation is as infectious as their impactful art-punk compositions which demonstrate influences of Black Country, New Road and the now defunct Black Midi. Across the masterfully recorded six tracks on their EP, an effective introduction to the London-based band, they not only demonstrate their mature approach with their instrumentation but give their audience a feel for the vibrancy of their live shows.

Lola, Billy and Vera spoke to Northern Transmissions about recording Eazy Peazy with Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox, the perks of playing shows outside of London and what’s in store for them in 2025.

NT: You’ve recently released your debut EP Eazy Peazy, I know you love playing live and have already played hundreds of shows. How was it to get into the studio? Was that something you had been waiting to do until you’d really figured your sound out? Has it gotten you excited to get back in to record more as a band?

Lola Cherry: I definitely think so, because it’s super different, you know, having a four day stint of getting an EP done. We recorded the whole thing as a demo in one day at a studio. We were there from 10am to 10pm recording, which was very intense. I remember us sitting down, in the beginning, and figuring out how we were even going to record certain bits. You have to sometimes think backwards and stop at places because you record everyone at different times, well, not everyone, but there’s a bit more maths to it, I found.

Billy Ward: Yeah, you take out parts that you might do live because you want to dub them in separately with a very specific sound.

Vera Leppänen: I remember talking with Dan [Fox, producer] and this was one of his clever-isms from the studio, I remember Billy saying to us, ‘Guys, should I do this guitar thing on the EP? Like, should I do it or should we dub it? Or should I play it?’ Dan went, ‘Do you want it on the EP?’ and Billy was like, ‘Yeah,’ and then Dan was just like, ‘Okay, play it then!’. It was like, yeah, that makes sense. We should do that!

Lola Cherry: Yeah, it was more of a thing where we’d get into the flow of recording, but we were changing stuff on the day, like Clio changed her part for “Sports Day” right before she was going to do it in her little bedroom. I remember, as well, Vera wrote a whole verse for “The Boss” outside just before recording it.

Vera Leppänena: Oh yeah, that was fun though because…

Lola Cherry: That was the three of us sitting down going through it.

Vera Leppänen: Yeah, it was literally everybody. Often, I’ll write songs just by myself and then maybe I’ll tweak one or two lyrics with everybody, but that was the first time that I sat down and I read it out loud to everyone and I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t know where it goes next. We need to do this together.’ That was really nice because we don’t usually do that and it gelled really nicely and I was really pleased.

Billy Ward: Recently we’ve been doing bits of that.

Vera Leppänen: Yeah, we’ve been doing that more. Which is probably a better way to write songs because, you know, the more the merrier.

Billy Ward: The crux of the thing will be made up by one person, but it's good to have eyes on it. The same with any other part, like taking a guitar part in isolation or drum part in isolation. Why wouldn’t you do it with the lyrics?

NT: Something I was wondering, as I said before, you’ve played so many live shows and for a band in the early years of being together, I think playing as many shows as you can do is such an invaluable way to develop your sound. I was interested to hear how you appreciated that way of creating Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s sound within the limitations of playing on stage, as opposed to spending a lot of time in the studio first and having all sorts of programs and software at your disposal to make arrangements as big or textured as possible? I think it’s invaluable to have the chance to learn on stage in front of people.

Vera Leppänen: Yeah, I mean, the point of being in a band is playing in a band, right? Mostly, anyway! And if you have to perform the shit live anyway, which is definitely what we always wanted to do, you might as well be able to actually play it live. It doesn’t help to put fucking studio reverbs and delays and distortions on things that you’ve recorded if you don’t then have the facilities or the practice to do it live. Also, it’s fun to play shows. It’s social, it’s a good way to have that interaction.

Billy Ward: You can see the song; you can see people react to the songs. Whereas, you can get in such rabbit holes, even when we’re writing songs and arranging them, we can get into such rabbit holes of where things need to be or wondering like, ‘This first needs to be a double verse and needs to get faster or be slower’. You do all of that so much more intuitively when you play live. You can really see the thing, especially with how we did the songs on this EP, you’d have the thing and it would be maybe 80% cooked and then you play it and go, ‘Okay, now we know what the 20% is, instead of finishing it entirely and then being precious about it when it comes to changing it after the fact. It’s good to just be able to surrender it to the live performance.

NT: Something I enjoyed about the EP is how there’s such an energetic and vibrant live feel to the performance. How much pre-production went into mapping out the overall sound and did you leave much room to improvise because a song like “Maegan” has such an instinctual, spur of the moment air to it.

Vera Leppänen: “Maegan” has been part of our live set that we have been playing for fuck knows how long! Basically when the band started, because we didn’t have any songs, the first few gigs were like five songs and then a noise section. No one wants to hear that!

Lola Cherry: We were really deliberating on whether to put it on the EP or not, but it is such a weirdly core part of the band. The whole EP, we’ve figured, is a bit of a coming of age element in our lives.

Billy Ward: I’m glad it’s on there.

Lola Cherry: Yeah, we’re really happy that it’s on the EP…

Billy Ward: I mean, If we didn’t put it on here, we’re definitely not putting it on the album.

Lola Cherry: No, and it will disappear at some point.

Billy Ward: Maybe, but I don’t know. I like it. Let’s keep it!

Lola Cherry: We’ve been playing it for so fucking long. There’s nothing that you have to think about doing when you’re playing that song live!

Vera Leppänen: I think with “Grow A Tongue In Time”, we really wanted to record the vocals and the guitar together and then violin came after that, which I guess it has to, but when we play that song live, it’s quite nice. It feels quite reactive and we all listen and we get to then play it together.

Billy Ward: Recording that song was nice. It was slightly awkward, but I’m so glad we did it like that because the instrumentation follows, or sits so nicely underneath the vocals. Being able to see that intimacy and being able to see Vera sing it and react to that was really good about recording. I liked recording that one a lot.

NT: You formed in 2019 and became a six-piece in 2023, how was the adjustment period following the new members coming on board? Was the chemistry between everyone immediate or were there some challenges that took time for the new configuration to fully lock-in?

Vera Leppänen: I think it’s challenging to have six people and then realize that you don’t all need to be playing all at once. That’s obviously hard.

Billy Ward: It was really gradual and I think after this summer’s shows and learning to tour and have the show be like a 40 minute thing that we can just pack-up and do it on command. I think since we’ve started doing shows out of London, we’ve definitely grown as a unit because…

Vera Leppänen: I guess it’s a different gravy! You’re traveling all that way for forty minutes so it better be fucking good.

Billy Ward: There’s more fire under your ass to play well, basically. You’ve got to be a bit more professional and a bit more on it and we all have to kind of lock in because when you’re doing a headline or when you’re in London in a venue you’re comfortable with, you have the evening to get into the zone with the people you’re around. Whereas, if it’s a festival in the afternoon you need to be able to just turn that thing on.

Lola Cherry: Yeah, again, it’s traveling hours to play a 30 minute set at festivals, specifically. You do have to get into more of a zone for that than if you’re headlining because with that you can talk and mess around a bit more.

NT: I saw that you recently played one of your biggest headline shows in London recently. Was there an added pressure with that show? Did you approach it any differently?

Billy Ward: There were definitely nerves going into it because it was a launch show, but we’re also quite thankfully accustomed to playing more sold-out or packed rooms.

Vera Leppänen; I was more nervous because, for me anyway, there was more pressure riding on that show because my family’s from Finland. My grandma, a woman in her mid-80s said to me, ‘Oh I’ll come see your next big show in London,’ and she took the plane over for it. Which is very sweet. I was like, ‘Oh my God, my grandma’s going to be here, and my uncle and my dad, this shit needs to be good!’ So there was that and obviously there were other people there that we needed to impress but mostly I was thinking about my grandma and how she was going to hate it because why on earth would she like this kind of music! I just really wanted her to be proud of me and I was really stressed out. There was definitely an added pressure with that show.

Billy Ward: Weirdly hometown shows are more sentimental and there’s more built-up to them because we’re doing fewer of them and there’s all the people we know coming to them.

Vera Leppänen: Which is funny because it used to be that no one would be there because we were playing them literally three times a fucking week and nobody wanted to see us anymore!

Billy Ward: Yeah and now, weirdly, with the out-of-town shows there’s a comfort in playing to a room of people you don’t know. Because you don’t need to worry as much.

Lola Cherry: Especially when they’ve never been to one of our shows before.

NT: What’s in store for Man / Woman / Chainsaw in 2025? Will you be working on your debut album?

Billy Ward: We’ve written a lot of it, but need to write more of it! And, then I think World Domination. That’s the plan. I think we can all agree. I have that as number one on the list and the album is a. close second.

order Eazy Peazy by Man/Womna/Chainsaw HERE